


Apples and Summer

by HathorAroha



Series: Fictober 2018 [1]
Category: Beauty and the Beast (2017)
Genre: Apples, Gen, Summer, Tree Climbing, fluffier than a giant basket of kittens
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-30
Updated: 2018-09-30
Packaged: 2019-07-20 23:29:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16147814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HathorAroha/pseuds/HathorAroha
Summary: Plumette encourages a young, seven-year-old Prince Adam to tree climb for the first time in his life.





	Apples and Summer

For once, Adam has a free day to do as he cares, trotting on little feet after Plumette out to the sprawling courtyard where they found a tree to sit under and munch on apples in companionable silence. Every now and again, Plumette nudged him sharply, reminding him again to stop wiggling his loose tooth. 

“It’s grossing me out, Adam,” Plumette complains, raising her eyebrows at him.

“It’s wobbly and feels strange.” 

“I get that, but not while we’re eating.” Plumette regards her apple core, examining it this way and that, before launching it as far as she can over the grass stretching out under the sun.

“How many apples do you think we can eat in one go?” Adam asked, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, “I want to try to eat seven.” 

“You’ll make yourself sick. Why would you eat seven?” 

Adam tosses his half-eaten apple over his shoulder, watching it roll away in the dry dirt, coming to rest up against the curve of a tree root. 

“Because I’m seven. But then I could eat seven  _candied_ apples–”  Adam’s eyes brightened, a wide grin revealing two missing teeth. “We can ask Cuisinier!” 

Adam jumps up but Plumette, laughing in her delightful way, stops him, tugging back on his arm.

“Don’t bother, silly, he–”

“He would! He likes me!” 

“We all do, Adam, but seven candied apples will make you  _very_ sick. And Mrs Potts will be cross.” 

Adam went back to plop down, cross-legged across from her, pouting in disappointment. “It might make my teeth fall out faster.” 

“And  _then_ …” Plumette’s voice drops to an ominous volume, leaning forward, hands clutching Adam’s shoulders. “They’ll never grow back. Never  _ever_.” 

“Never?” His blue eyes are wide, round, with shock.

“Never.” Plumette can’t keep her serious face for long, smiling again as she cranes her neck back to look up at the overarching branches. “I have a much better idea.” 

Adam looks up too, trying to see what Plumette was looking at. 

“What is it?” 

Plumette pushes herself onto her feet, reaching out a hand to Adam, who takes it, getting up on his own feet too. 

“Have you ever climbed a tree?” she asks, brown eyes dancing with fun. 

“Why would I do that?” 

Another laugh, a free, delightful one, like a very young girl having the time of her life, letting go of his hand as she raises her arms in the air like she was praising the heavens.

“Why  _wouldn’t_ you?” 

“Father wouldn’t–” 

“Who cares? He can’t see out here, can he?” 

“What if–” 

But Plumette is already circling the tree, looking for the lowest branch. Finding a perfect foothold in between two branches, she grabs on to the tree and pulls herself up, leaning over to peer through fluttering leaves down at Adam, who looks back at her with uncertain surprise. Plumette’s sure she can detect some thought in him, a thought deep down that he really does want to try climbing a tree. 

“Well? Are you? Come climb with me?” 

“I might get dirty.” 

“No you won’t, silly, it’s dry as dust up here. And every little boy– _and_ girl–needs to climb a tree at least once in their life!” 

“Even me?” 

“Even you.” Plumette jumps down and grabs Adam’s hand, tugging him to where she had found the branch, gently urging him forward, placing his hands on two branches where she thinks he will have the best grip. “This is gonna be so much fun!” 

Adam stares up at the arching green and brown, squinting against summer light, watching speckles of blue peek through the leaves. He spots a nest somewhere way, way up, but it appears empty. He hopes that the baby birds in that brown, stick-laden nest had grown up and flown away with friends on big adventures he could only dream of. 

“What’re you waiting for, silly?” Plumette asked, “The tree to pick you up into its arms itself?” 

“I won’t fall will I?” 

“I’ll catch you if you do, trust me. I’ll be right behind you.” 

Assured of his safety, Adam puts forward a foot, wedging it into a secure spot in the branches, pulling himself up, Plumette helping him too, and leans over a branch, looking through the leaves, as she had done before. 

“Keep going!” 

Urged on by Plumette, he searches with a foot for the next foothold, and pulls himself up again, his hands holding on to the branches for dear life. He looks down again, heart skipping a beat as he sees the ground now even farther down than before. 

“You’re doing well,” Plumette encourages from down on the ground, “I’m coming up too.” 

He hears the rustling around him as Plumette joins him. 

“Look, a perfect branch to step on to–not that one, the other–that’s the one!” 

Adam pulled himself up a third time, his other foot nearly slipping, and he gasps with surprise, but carries on upwards. 

“How far can we climb?” he called down to Plumette. 

“Just a couple more branches. Go a little to your right–your other right–grab onto that one–that’s it! See that branch with the curve in front of you?” 

Adam carefully takes a hand off a branch and points a little to his right. 

“That one, Plumette?” 

“The very same. Just carefully shuffle over to it. I’m right behind you.” 

Adam makes his way, careful shuffle after careful shuffle, turning himself sideways, hands going one over the other on the branch above. He startles a little bird by his approach, the creature flying up to the treetops out of his reach. Distracted by watching the bird flying away, he doesn’t notice himself leaning back a little too far, and cries out in surprise as one of his feet slip off the branch below. Not a moment too soon, Plumette’s arm wraps around his torso, holding him as he regains his balance. 

“I’ve got you–just a couple more steps along and we can sit down.” 

One more step, lining left foot in front of his right, hands shuffling along, fingers bumping against knots and bumps and late budding leaves poking from the summer-tanned wood. 

Another step and now he can see the curve of the branch, perfect for sitting and eating apples all day long. A little grey down feather flutters like a tiny butterfly, trapped in a tiny crack in the wood. A wisp of loose hair escapes Adam’s tied-back hair, trailing across his nose, making it tickle like he’s about to sneeze. 

“We’ve reached it! We can sit down now, Adam.” 

Adam very carefully bends his knees, adjusting his posture until he can properly sit down on the branch. He expects it to be bendy, fragile, but to his surprise–and relief–it holds strong as Plumette joins him, sitting down alongside him, an arm coming around his back keep him from slipping off back out of the tree. 

_Don’t look down–_

Yet he he looks down anyway, heart skipping a beat on seeing the leaf and twig-laden ground far below. Over-ripe apples lie in the dirt, now soft, brown, and mushy under the summer sun. 

Plumette nudged him. “Don’t look down, or you’ll worry about it.” 

Looking up at Plumette, he asks, “How do birds do it?” 

“How do they do what?” 

“not fall out of trees or feel scared they’ll fall?” 

“Because they have wings and wings help them fly.” 

“But what about when they’re asleep? Why don’t they fall then?” 

Plumette shrugs, reaching above her with her other hand to snag an apple, offering it to Adam who takes it at once. 

“No idea, but they seem to sleep well enough up here don’t they?” 

“I can’t imagine hanging on to a branch in my sleep all night.” 

“They’re birds, we’re not. If you want to know, ask them.” 

Adam munches into his apple, “I can’t,” he says around his bite. 

“Why not? And don’t talk while eating, you might choke.” 

“Sorry,” he said, swallowing his bit of apple before continuing. “They don’t speak French.” 

“Oh?” 

“They speak in song.” 

“What if it’s French birdsong?” Plumette suggests like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. Tapping his shoulder, she points quietly at a bird hopping a few feet above them, chirping away for the world to hear. “It could be in French.” 

“I don’t know French birdsong.” 

Plumette grins, “Then you’ll have to learn it and then you can ask them. I’m sure with all the books in the library, there’ll be  _something_.” 

“Oh! That’s what I”ll do when I grow up!” 

“What, study French birdsong?” 

“Get a scientist to help me translate bird French, and then we can talk with the birds and ask why they don’t fall out of trees when they sleep, and what the world looks like from the clouds and–”

Plumette laughs good-naturedly at Adam’s excited, fast-paced jabbering. His hands are so animated in gesture that his half-eaten apple slips from his fingers, bumping against branches as it falls to the ground. He stares at his sticky fingers. 

“I lost my apple.” 

“Good thing there’s plenty more for us,” Plumette remarks, stretching over to pick another one, handing it to him. “Let’s have one more apple each and then we can go back in the castle, how about that?” 

Adam nods, smile shining ear to ear. “One more apple!” 

And so they rest for a bit longer in the crook of the tree, munching happily on apples rich with the taste of summer sun.

**Author's Note:**

> Fanfic I wrote for @fictober18 on Tumblr, with the prompt, "This is gonna be so much fun!"


End file.
